


i got one foot in the cradle (and one in the grave)

by shuofthewind



Series: The Iron Lady [3]
Category: Agent Carter (TV), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Always a Different Sex, Avengers Feels, Bechdel Test Pass, F/F, Female Tony Stark, Lots of Cursing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-25
Updated: 2015-04-25
Packaged: 2018-03-25 16:00:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3816418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shuofthewind/pseuds/shuofthewind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sneers at her. “The soldier,” he says. “Then the spy. And now you.”</p><p>“The Sugar Plum Fairy,” says Toni. “Damn fucking right.”</p><p>[An <em>Avengers</em> interlude.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	i got one foot in the cradle (and one in the grave)

Toni has a system: every time something weird happens, she has JARVIS look into SHIELD’s servers to see if it’s because of them.

It doesn’t work, really. SHIELD’s firewalls are too secure; remote hacking is out of the question, even for JARVIS, who can get past the digital borders in North Korea if she asks him to. If she’s gonna be honest about it, it worries her. Some of the stories Aunt Peggy used to tell, back when Toni could get her drunk enough to do it, have made her leery of any sort of intelligence organization that keeps its own intelligence under wraps.

She hasn’t seen Peggy Carter in years, now, she thinks, curling her fingers through Pepper’s hair while Pepper sleeps. Not since the cremation ceremony. She had the distinct impression back then that she’d disappointed Margaret Fucking Carter somehow, and so Toni had done what she always does, and cut Peggy out entirely.

It strikes her, suddenly, that Peggy Carter might even be dead.

She hates that idea, and it pisses her off, how much she hates it.

“JARVIS,” she says, quietly, so she doesn’t wake Pepper. “Find Peggy Carter for me, would you?”

“Yes, Miss Stark.”

*

It’s not fate that the day after JARVIS finds Margaret Fucking Carter for her, she meets Captain Fucking America.

No. It’s not fate. It’s just really fucking bad luck.

She’s not sure what to expect from Captain Stars-n-Stripes. Her dad never talked about Steve Rogers much. She thinks it would have been different if Toni had been a boy, like her father wanted. The only time she can remember Howard Stark even _mentioning_ Rogers is on Aunt Peggy’s birthday, once a year. (Aunt Peggy would always get this super-pinched, super-sad look on her face when he did it, but her dad kept doing it. She supposes it was because Howard needed to hear it more than Peggy wanted to.)  

She’s not sure what she _expects_ , but she’s damn sure what she _gets_ , which is a stuck-up naïve choir boy who’d probably shit his pants if she came on to him. Coulson follows him around like some kind of fucked-up puppy dog, preening like Captain Tight-Pants is some kinda patriotic Jesus throwback brought back from the Planet Izod or something. He’s not—he’s a dick with a stick up his ass the size of Italy and he could do with a good few sharp shocks to his system, preferably with a taser. Or a lightning bolt or two.

 _The world isn’t nice_ , she wants to scream at him. _You’re not in black and white anymore. You fought the fucking Nazis but we’re not your goddamn soldiers. We don’t just move where you tell us to. You might have given up your free fucking will, but I’ll let you kill me before you can take mine._

Toni wishes to hell and back that Pepper were here, and claps her bot onto Nick Fury’s workstation.

*

Probably the only tolerable person on this goddamn wreck of a boat is Bruce Banner, and he’s twitchier than DUM-E on speed.

(She experimented with his programming once when she was drunk. It didn’t end well.)

He’s as fucked up as the rest of them, but at least those scars are obvious. He doesn’t bullshit. He’s straight with you. When he says “make me mad and I’ll probably kill you,” he’s telling the absolute truth. He hates it, but he does it, and so Toni likes him.

Agent Coulson watches them for the first half an hour or so of their jibber-jabber, his eyes jumping from one of them to the other like he’s following some kind of fucked-up tennis match. Toni catches him looking, and drops him a wink.

“I’d invite you in on the action, Agent, but you’re a taken man. Or so I’ve heard. What is she, a violist?”

Coulson looks as though he’s sucked on a lemon. Banner makes a face. “Can we focus on the radiation, please?”

“Only radiation in here is the stuff you brought along with you, mop-top.” She knocks him with her shoulder, and then flicks through a few dialog bars on her flatscreen, snapping them onto the nearest monitor. “Besides, _I_ have already amended your equation.”

“I don’t think squaring that will solve the issue.”

“But it looks nicer.” She holds out her fist. “C’mon, Banner. Don’t leave me hanging.”

Bruce Banner looks from Coulson to her and back again, as if he’s searching for an explanation. Then, with a sigh, he taps his knuckles against hers.

“Boom,” says Toni. “Science bros.”

Coulson leaves shaking his head.

*

Things she hates about SHIELD: the coffee.

You’d think it was the robot suits, or the WMDs, or, hell, even the shitty-ass tech— _who still uses screens when they could have 3-D imagers?_ —but no. It’s their ganked as hell coffee, burnt to a crisp and tasting of Stalin’s hairy asshole.

She should have brought her own beans.

*

Toni Stark's List of Avengers:

Thor: Decent dude. She makes a mental note to ask how many shots he can drink before he passes out. Also, she wants to touch his chest, in a completely platonic, I-am-taken sort of way.

Huge Green Rage Machine: _Stand back. We shall science._

Merida’s Hot Uncle: Who knows. She’s said a grand total of three words to them and two of them were a partial sex joke.

Captain Liberty: Hates her guts.

It’s not too hard to see. He glares at her. She wonders if it’s because she looks like Howard Stark (plus awesome tits), or if it’s because she doesn’t take his shitty orders. Who knows—it could be both. It could even be that she keeps hitting on Romanoff, just to see Natalie Rushman roll her eyes and ask if one redheaded bombshell isn’t enough for her.

(Pepper’s enough. Pepper’s _more_ than enough. Toni just keeps doing it to make Natasha Fucking Romanoff say ‘redheaded bombshell’ as many times as fucking possible.)

He thinks she’s spastic. ( _Obviously._ ) He thinks she’s spoiled. ( _Have you met me?_ ) He thinks she’s never sacrificed a damn thing in her life, and it’s going to bite her in the ass.

( _Not if I kick your balls up between your teeth, first._ )

She wonders sometimes what Aunt Peggy saw in this guy. Sometimes, she thinks she catches glimpses. He’s smarter than he looks and quicker than he acts. He takes no shit and gives none back. And—she hates admitting it, but it’s probably true—he’s like Justice and Liberty had a batshit baby with time-displacement issues. He’s just one of those guys who is Genuinely Good, which is why Aunt Peggy loved him.

His sainthood gets on Toni’s nerves.

Natasha: Now, Natasha’s easier. They have a system, Toni and Natasha. Having a system is always good. Give Natasha shit. Get shit back. For a super-scary Russian spy who could kill Toni with her pinky finger, Natasha has a wickedly dirty sense of humor.

It scares the shit out of Coulson to see Natasha Romanoff and Toni Stark getting along. It’s probably 87% the reason why Toni resolves to keep doing it for as long as possible.

*

She calls Pepper in between Phil Coulson dying and Captain America getting his shit together.

“If you need me,” Pepper says, “the Mark P’s only a few hours away. I can get there and help.”

“You don’t need to save the world in the Mark P, Pep,” she says. “You can do it in Loubotinis at a high-rise desk.”

“A high-rise desk sounds stupid.” Pepper hums. “You sure you don’t need me there?”

 _I always need you._ “Be safe,” Toni says instead. “Alien guts might blow your way in a few hours.”

“Better only be alien guts. I don’t think I want any other biohazards on my plane.”

 _Yeah,_ Toni thinks. _I really fucking love this woman._

*

If any of them had to die, it should have been her.

She thinks it as she heads for New York. She thinks it as she watches the portal open, as the Chitauri stream forth. It should have been her.

She will wake up screaming for the rest of her life, because _it should have been her._

_You cheat death, it comes back to bite you, Antonia Esther Stark._

“His name,” she says through gritted teeth, “ _was Phil_.”

*

Another person who hates her guts: Loki.

(She’s not sure what his last name is. Do Asgardians even have last names? It seems backwards, for a society that’s supposed to be a million years in the technological future.)

He sneers at her. “The soldier,” he says. “Then the spy. And now you.”

“The Sugar Plum Fairy,” says Toni. “Damn fucking right.”

“It’s apt that it’s you to come after me now.” Loki shifts his hands on his glow-stick. “The sell-out. The washed-up genius trying to clamber into her father’s boots.”

“Nah. His feet were smaller than mine. Go figure. You know what they say about men and foot-size.” She dips her eyes down to his feet. “What do you wear, six, six and a half?”

His fingers dig into her throat. Toni chokes. “You,” says Loki, “you are _nothing._ A useless, gibbering whore, like all of your kind. I will take great pleasure in destroying you.”

“That’s what she said,” Toni croaks, and lets him throw her out the window.

_Totally won that one._

*

Germany was a shitshow. The helicarrier? Fucking ridiculous.

New York is a nightmare.

She remembers the fights with Obie, with Vanko. They don’t hold a candle to this. This is destruction. She sees Afghanistan all over again, in the streets and the subway tunnels, fire and terror and monsters from under the bed. This is Jonah and the Whale, Ahab and Moby-Dick, Stoker and Dracula. This is war, but it’s more than that. It’s nothing she’s ever experienced before.

She thinks she’ll never experience it again.

It’s one of the few times Toni Stark is ever wrong about aliens.

*

She shouldn’t be surprised when SHIELD deploys the nuke, but she is. Somehow, she is. She’s forgotten, working with Captain Fuckface McDoucheDick (that one’s good, she’s sticking it on Twitter) that there are people who actually lack morals. Blow up Manhattan? Cool. Lemme just drop a warhead on a billionaire and over eight million people.

The suit’s almost out of power. JARVIS is jittering in her head. She punches the gas and breaks the sound barrier as she flies, pushing harder— _harder better faster stronger_ —because she’s the only one, the _only one_ , who can do it. Fuck Captain Fuckface, this is _her._ She _can_ do this. She _will_ do this.

Pepper’s dial tone rings out. She engages the magnets. She sees a flash of Natasha’s brilliant red hair, waved rather than curled, and makes a mental note to tell her to keep that haircut. It’s fucking sexy. She hears HawkGuy swear in her coms. She hits the barrier.

And then there is space—

The nuke leaves her hands—

She can’t breathe—

— _I don’t want to die_ —

She sees stars and they burn so bright against her eyes—

—it’s space—

—the air—

— _his name was Phil—_

—there’s nothing—

— _let the other guy crawl over_ you—

Silence.

*

Pepper finally arrives when she’s in the hospital. (Toni’s never willingly entered a hospital in her life. She can only say it’s all Captain Tight-Pants’ fault.) For an instant, Toni almost doesn’t recognize her. She’s seen this woman disheveled and sex-tossed and pouting, furious and incandescent with color burning bright in her cheeks, smiling and softer than silk, but never like this. Pepper’s _frayed_ , and she takes one look at Toni before sinking into the chair that Captain Tight-Pants left behind, seizing both of Toni’s hands in hers, and pressing them to her forehead, her cheeks.

“You idiot,” she says, and her voice cracks. “You idiot, you _stupid_ fool—”

“What’s with you, not picking up the phone, huh?” Toni rasps. “Not even when your girlfriend goes to the other end of the galaxy—seriously feeling the love here—”

Pepper chokes out a laugh and sets her lips to the center of Toni’s palm. “You idiot,” she says again, “you _idiot_ ,” and then she’s crying, out and out crying, and Toni flutters her hands because what the fuck is she supposed to do when the most put-together woman on the planet bursts into tears in her hospital room? Finally, she does the only thing she _can_ do, and pulls Pepper forward onto the bed. Fuck hospital regs. Pepper sets her palms against Toni’s broken ribs and hides her face in Toni’s collarbone.

“You asshole,” she hisses into Toni’s skin. “You  _asshole_.”

“Guilty as charged,” she says, and sets her cheek to Pepper’s hair.

They fall asleep like that. If Toni were less cynical, she’d call it cute. Since she’s cynical as fuck, it’s just really goddamn uncomfortable. She does it anyway, and when she wakes up, she shakes Pepper awake too.

“Babe,” she says. “gimme a notepad. My fingers have plans inside.”

Pepper rolls her eyes.

*

It’s a month later when she picks up the phone.

“Hi,” she says. “It’s me. Toni.”

There’s a long silence from the other end of the phone. Then:

“It’s about bloody time.”

**Author's Note:**

> A lot more dialogue in this one than there is in the others, but I feel like that was necessary, sort of.
> 
> Title from "Messed Up (Fucked Up) World" by The Pretty Reckless.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic of] i got one foot in the cradle (and one in the grave)](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3850627) by [Dr_Fumbles_McStupid](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid/pseuds/Dr_Fumbles_McStupid)




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